


wrapped in evergreen

by empathieves



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Post-Game, Post-Trespasser, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 19:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18675820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empathieves/pseuds/empathieves
Summary: little moments by the sea, and the start of something new.





	wrapped in evergreen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thefilthremains](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefilthremains/gifts).



Cullen builds their little house himself. It takes him weeks, and they stay in an inn in a nearby town in the meantime. Amalthea sits by the fire in the main room and watches the comings and goings of people. She spends her time reading, or napping, and sometimes she goes with Cullen and watches him hammer away at wooden boards and lug rocks from the cliffs. His hair gets longer, and he stops styling it so much. It suits him, the curliness of it, and the sea air makes it stay that way even when they’re back in the warm dryness of the inn. She runs her fingers through it at night, kisses the salt off his skin. They go to bed exhausted, but Cullen wakes up smiling. He tells her that he loves what he’s doing - he wants to build their home himself.  _ It feels good, making something with my hands that doesn’t hurt people _ . She kisses him, and watches him go back to work, something settling in her chest at his retreating back. She realises his shoulders aren’t so tense anymore.

 

-

 

When their home is finished he insists on carrying her over the threshold, even though their wedding is more than a month past now. He’s stronger now than he was even at Skyhold, and he lifts her with such ease that she does swoon a little. Their home is...perfect. It’s cozy and warm, filled with light, and she falls in love with it the moment she sees it. She falls asleep that night in their bed to the sound of the ocean and Cullen’s breathing, and she thinks that she just might burst from how happy she is. 

 

-

 

Cullen is terrible at braiding hair. It takes him six attempts the first time, and Amalthea tries to stifle her laughter as he sighs and tries again but doesn’t quite manage it. She can’t do it herself - she wasn’t that great at it in the first place, and doing it one handed is a bit much to ask. But hearing Cullen - who lived through a war, who commanded an army - swear under his breath at Amalthea’s hair is kind of funny. It’s a lot funny, actually, and the way he raises his arms in victory when he finally manages a lopsided braid is even funnier. Her giggles get him going, though, and they end up in fits of laughter together. They finally start to calm down, and then Amalthea snorts and they get going again. She rolls around so much that the braid comes out and he has to do it over, but he’s still chuckling this time instead of swearing. It’s still terrible, and it looks like Amalthea has done it with one hand anyway, but he’ll get better at it with practice.

 

-

 

Pregnancy is wonderful in a lot of ways but  _ really _ terrible in others. The nausea starts soon and doesn’t stop until she’s three months along. The cravings are strange and make Cullen look at her like she’s just started dancing on the war table. She writes a letter to Josephine asking for Antivan chocolates, the kind with the jellied fruit centre. She writes another to Varric asking for pickled herring and dried peaches. There’s another one, that she doesn’t tell Cullen about, that she writes to Dorian. In that one she asks for the spiciest foods he can send, whatever he can find in Tevinter, and when it arrives she eats them voraciously and puts up with streaming eyes for an hour. When Cullen comes back she says it’s because she’s emotional, but she’s found out when he kisses her and then starts sputtering and coughing when he pulls away.

 

“Why does your mouth taste like fire?” he wheezes, and she laughs so hard she forgets why she ever kept it secret in the first place. 

 

She writes to Mia after that, to ask if she knows anything about why she’s behaving so strangely, and she gets a long letter back explaining the weirdness of bearing a child. It’s the first time Mia has called her  _ sister _ , written in careful cursive on the top of the letter, and Amalthea clutches it to her breast and then puts it away, safe and away from the elements.

 

They start to write each other letters after that, back and forth, and Cullen smiles and says that Mia is probably glad to finally have family who isn’t afraid to put ink to paper.

 

-

 

“Where did you get that scar?” she asks, her fingers on his lip.

 

“Oh, this one? Mia and I were sword fighting and she got me right in the mouth. What about that one?” he asks, his hand brushing along her neck.

 

“An Orlesian noble was trying to perform a trick involving whiskey and fire magic, and it got a bit out of hand. What’s this one from?”

 

“That’s from when I wrestled a bear named Old Smokey. Ancient Templar tradition. What about...that one?”

 

“A nug bit me.”

 

Cullen burst into laughter at that, and Amalthea followed with him. The stories were absurd, but no more so than the real stories behind the scars.

 

Well, no. The nug story was definitely more absurd.

 

-

 

Sometimes she wakes up and lies there, listening to the ocean, her hand resting on her now swollen stomach. She will listen to Cullen’s quiet snoring, the way his breath whistles occasionally like a tuneless bird, and she’ll go to that quiet place in her mind that she has only found since they started to live here.

 

It’s in one of these moments that she first feels the life inside her move, kicking her, and she’s so surprised that she startles and nearly falls out of the bed. It wakes Cullen up, and he thinks it’s a nightmare at first - when she tells him what it is he puts his ear to her stomach, and falls asleep again waiting for their child to kick again.

 

(She does wonder why he thought it was a good idea to put his ear there instead of his hand, because being kicked in the ear hurts even when you’re being kicked by a tiny foot, but she doesn’t say anything).

 

-

 

Labor is terrifying, right up until the moment she sees her daughter in the midwife’s arms. Then it is suddenly the single most rewarding thing she has ever done.

 

Mia comes to stay with them for a while afterwards, and she busies herself with helping Amalthea and passing on various parenting wisdom. Cullen is painfully awkward the first few days, until Mia finally rolls her eyes and punches him on the arm and tells him it’s fine. Things relax after that, and when Mia leaves again it’s in good spirits.

 

They sleep with their daughter between them, and in hushed voices they name her Marie. She’s already a handful - there’s a mischievous kind of light in her eyes despite her being only a few weeks old - but she’s beautiful, and she’s perfect, and she’s theirs.

 

-

 

The months pass so quickly. Amalthea learns to knit one handed, one needle clamped between her thighs and the other in her hand, and she turns out what feels like dozens of tiny baby clothes. Marie grows fast, and while the first attempts were...not brilliantly made, after a while she gets quite good at it. She keeps all the clothes Marie outgrows in a chest at the end of the bed, and sometimes she looks in and marvels at how small she was only just a little while ago.

 

Cullen trains their mabari, makes furniture, takes Marie on long walks in a pouch Amalthea makes from soft and sturdy wool. He says it helps with the itching that still hasn’t gone away - the pain from lyrium withdrawal wakes him in the night sometimes, and his joints ache from the wear of being a soldier for so long. Amalthea listens, and empathises, and when the phantom pain from her arm bothers her or her scars start to itch he does the same for her. 

 

She writes to Varric, thinking vaguely that he might have a solution for their pains, and she gets a long letter in response - he’s researched it for her, asked around, and there’s pages of notes enclosed with possible solutions. She smiles and cries, and it takes her a few attempts to respond with her thanks because she keeps smearing the ink.

 

She makes another pouch, smaller this time, and fills it with grains. She keeps it by the fire, and the next time Cullen’s joints ache she presses it to them and he sighs with a bit of relief.

 

-

 

The next time it’s sunny and warm they go down to the beach, and introduce Marie to the wonders of sand. She grabs it up in her tiny fists, kicks at with her little feet, and giggles the whole time. Amalthea can’t stop smiling - she looks over at Cullen and sees him smiling too.

 

How strange, to be so happy. To feel so safe.

 

They stay down there the entire day, and while she does have a few regrets the next morning when she wakes up with the most dreadful sunburn she’s ever gotten in her life, it’s one of the best days she’s ever had.

 

(Marie, who they both paid close attention to ensuring  _ wasn’t _ burned, is just fine - and doesn’t understand why grabbing at Mommy’s skin hurts her. It’s a rough week.)

 

-

 

Cullen makes a high chair for Marie, which she loves dearly - well, she loves to drum on it, which is enough for them. It’s wonderful, though, because it means they can cook together for the first time since she was born. Neither of them had felt comfortable leaving Marie unattended up until that point, but they can put her in her chair now and watch her while they cook.

 

They bake bread, which is disastrous for a lot of reasons - for one they don’t actually know how to do it, and they make a  _ lot _ of mistakes - and for another the actual baking process is constantly interrupted. 

 

Cullen keeps putting flour on her nose. She retaliates by putting some in his ear. He huffs at her and then, while she’s not looking, flicks her with water. It devolves fairly quickly after that, and only stops when Marie starts giggling and they both pause to look at her. Amalthea has a fistful of dough and is rubbing it into Cullen’s hair, and Cullen is pouring flour down her shirt. They burst into laughter after that, and while the bread is misshapen and strange looking it tastes good when they eat it later, sitting in front of the fire with Marie on the rug.

 

-

 

Marie starts to crawl, and then walk (albeit clumsily), and then to get into things she shouldn’t. They spend a lot of their time following her around the house and the garden, watching her as she picks grass (harmless), rolls around on the rug (fine), and eats bugs (probably not fine???). It’s a constant struggle between them and Marie’s insatiable curiosity, and they all go to bed exhausted. One night, after Marie has fallen asleep, Cullen looks over at her and says with more dread in his voice than the night they faced Corypheus, “What are we going to do when she starts talking?”

 

Amalthea’s laughter wakes Marie up, and then they have to sing her to sleep while Amalthea grins and tries to keep her giggles from bubbling up.

 

-

 

It’s simple, the life they have now. Amalthea knits, reads, patiently teaches Marie how to talk and read. Cullen makes furniture and sells it to the nearby towns, goes on long walks with Marie holding his hand and tells her about the trees and plants. They have a vegetable and herb garden, and next year they’re going to plant some fruit trees. They go swimming down at the beach, go hunting for shells together. Amalthea keeps saving Marie’s clothes in a chest. They bake together.

 

They’re safe. And they’re happy. 

 

Amalthea muses on this, and looks over at Cullen and Marie. They’ve fallen asleep on the bed, Marie lying on top of Cullen’s chest and snoring - the same tuneless whistle that Cullen has coming from her mouth. She smiles, and tucks herself in beside them. Might as well have a nap, she thinks, drifting off - there’s nothing else she has to do.


End file.
